As microscopy platforms become quantitative, a simple method and hardware combination to allow standardization between these platforms needs to be developed. For example, in fluorescent microscopy applications, there are products currently available to measure fluorescence intensity for a system (i.e., fluorescent microspheres, fluorescent targets), but they do not provide an overall efficiency factor that is related to variations in the overall construction of a microscope platform, or variations in the light source independent of sample variations.